If you’re an American soldier who enjoys a poppy seed bagel every now and then, you need to stop. The US military has updated its drug policy, telling soldiers to avoid poppy seeds and that smoking delta-8, the legal but federally unregulated alternative to marijuana, is also banned .

The Army announced changes in the rollout of its updated Regulation 600-85, The Army Substance Abuse Program. As first spotted by Task & Purpose, one of the major changes is the ban on delta-8 products.

“Many synthetic THC substitutes are now available on the open market in many states. Synthetic cannabis such as Delta-8-THC and other THC substitutes are used in drugs such as “spices”, whose action is so closely linked to THC that it is obvious that synthetic cannabis and THC substitutes will have the same potential for abuse. as THC,” the new regulations state.

Traditional marijuana may be banned in half the country, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get high. A 2018 federal Farm Bill legalized CBD and hemp-derived products, and as a result, many states that have strict marijuana laws are also full of stores selling hemp-derived THC products that look and smell like weed but are not technically.

Stores selling flowers, edibles and delta-8 oils can be found throughout the southern states that are home to most of the country’s military bases. Markets for hemp-derived products are largely unregulated, and in some cases, stores in states that ban marijuana simply sell weed and call it hemp. Most of the time, when a soldier smokes Delta-8, he fails a drug test administered by the military.

The military has been testing and punishing the use of delta-8 since 2001. Updating regulations here is just an official formality of political catch-up. “The majority (of soldiers) said, ‘The state says it’s legal, so I’m going to smoke it,'” Joseph Schoenbeck, a military police detective at Fort Knox, told a publication army in 2022. “Others say they just want to get out of the military, so they don’t really care.

Another change to the regulations involved a warning about foods containing poppy seeds. In a cover of a classic Seinfeld In the plot, it turns out that delicious bagels and muffins will make you dirty on a drug test. “Soldiers are encouraged to avoid consuming foods containing poppy seeds, as new varieties of seeds may contain high levels of codeine,” the regulation states.

“Although drug testing laboratories have implemented additional measures to distinguish poppy seed ingestion from codeine abuse, Soldiers should make every effort to avoid these food products. »